Digital Makeover: Updating a Study Abroad Library

I’m in a unique position. In the second year of my MLIS program at Florida State University, I’ve been granted the opportunity to work and study abroad in Florence, Italy. I’m now using the practical knowledge I’ve learned so far in library studies to supervise FSU’s Study Center Library in the heart of one of the world’s most-visited cities. So what’s the catch?

Florence is not like most modern cities. Walking through the city center, it’s easy to imagine life as it was 200 years ago. Street performers still play accordions and violins, street vendors roast chestnuts. Older buildings tower over narrow cobblestone streets. The city embraces its heritage — there are no skyscrapers or digital billboards here.But close to 6,000 American students travel to Florence every year, and despite the city’s rustic trappings, their studies need to stay current with the times. When I got to FSU’s Florence library in August 2011, I found:

12 new computers

1 ancient printer

6,000 books

1 card catalog

No digital records to speak of

No websites

If, like me, you thought that in 2011 every noteworthy organization had a website and every noteworthy library had an online catalog, think again. The Florence Program is a great organization (with excellent, professional staff members), and the Florence library is a very good collection of academic texts, popular books, maps, and travel guides. So why is there no digital presence?
One reason is that the library has for time immemorial been led by one graduate student chosen from FSU’s MLIS program. So, once a year, the library loses its supervisor and gains a new one. And each new graduate student supervisor grapples with living in a foreign country, managing a library, and taking classes. There seems to be little time left for large-scale digitization projects.

Despite all of this, I’ve decided to do what I can to move this library into the internet age. My mission will start with a website built in EZ Publish (FSU’s preferred Content Management System) and will continue as far as I can get with putting our holdings online in a searchable format. My main criteria for finding a system of cataloging online, were, roughly:

Quick and easy to build.

Inexpensive or free.

Easy to searching.

Easy to maintain.

After exploring a few open source softwares (Koha, Evergreen, BiblioQ), I quickly discovered that I was out of my element. (Apache Tomcat servers? Yankee hotel foxtrot?) Besides, we didn’t have a website, much less a dedicated server for the installation of our catalog. So I started to check out LibraryThing. It’s a service aimed at book lovers who want to keep their personal libraries in order, by for my purposes it seems to fit the bill. You can see my early LibraryThing efforts here.

I can load all 6,000+ books from the library onto this website for $25. It provides the books’ metadata, which I can download into a CSV or Excel file so there’s room to migrate our digital library if that’s needed in the future.

But to what extent should I put all of my hopes and dreams of a quick, online catalog into LibraryThing? Although we’re a low-traffic library, I won’t be able to use LibraryThing to properly track circulation stats, so should I rethink my objectives and try to build something more comprehensive somewhere else? Something that we could “own” more fully?

For now, I’m sticking with the card catalog. But hopefully I’ll be able to take some steps towards creating a digital presence by the end of next summer.

Justin,
What a fantastic opportunity to leave lasting beneficial effects!
It is indeed hard to imagine that there are card catalog libraries in active use but as you noted, perhaps it is still currently the best tool for the job. I think the important point is that you are exploring and trying new ideas given the resources at your disposal. Implementing a forward-thinking solution is progress. Even if it isn’t perfect, you’ll learn more as part of the process.
The social aspect of hauling the library into the digital age is another great benefit. Just with this post, by reaching out to the greater community you and your library patrons can both benefit from others’ experience and knowledge, as well as provide same to those with similar challenges (those perhaps closer to home).
I look forward to following your progress (and footsteps).
a presto
Jo

As someone who plays a small role in this process (supervisor of FSU internship program)–I grovel at both of your brilliant ‘feets’–so exciting to envision and see the Florence library leap forward!! All puns are good–Dr. K

Well, certainly you need to start with a limited scope. My advice would be to start with the most circulated items in the collection, assuming of course there are circulation records? And to keep your primary target audience at the center of all your thinking, are they predominately from one discipline, like History students or something for example. Once again a limited scope is probably the best way to start. In a more perfect world I would recommend conducting a simple survey of the students coming into the library to see what the actual users of the library feel should be in the digital library. Of course, users probably don’t want to take a survey so you might be limited to just asking people through short interviews. I would also talk to Dr. Oh as she is our resident prof with digital libraries. In class we used Omeka so the university might already have some deal with them. Now Omeka might not be the best choice as I found plenty of usability problems with it over the course of the semester and LibraryThing might be easier. But starting small and setting up a plan for future growth to leave the next administrator is probably your best bet. The main thing here is to develop a good technology plan. I’ve got a couple of good examples I can send you and the Florida Electronic Library also has the Alachua county plan as an example on their website as well.

I started off on the first shelf but then got kind of wise and headed towards the most circulated bits (art history and popular literature). I’m sort of headed to total inclusion as an end goal with the digital library. I hadn’t considered leaving materials out, just wanted to decide whether there was a better system for my needs right now. I’ll surely prioritize what materials I load first. But if I can keep loading books, why not? Is it possibly for a digital library to get ‘bloated’? It’d just be a matter of time spent, and I have (student) library assistants to help.

I’d love to see some technology plans. I’ll send you a message about that.

I also didn’t mention that I’m already in touch with my successor for next year and I’m going to keep them in the loop with my projects to get them off to a running start.

No barcodes here. Are you recommending generating, printing, and attaching individual QR codes for each book? Or just the highly circulated ones? Or just having a QR code on the website so people can grab the book info to go find it on the shelf?

There are a few smartphones, but most students will just get a cell phone locally, usually dumbphones.

Sounds like a lot of hard work, Justin, but it also sounds like you’re really committed to the process – and to making sure that there’s something for your successor to build on. I’ve been struggling with “passing it on” in the ephemeral grad school world in my own way, with student leadership. My idea is to create a quick less-than-five-page guide to Student Leader Start-up, to give them access to frequently asked questions (both theirs and other people’s of them) and an idea of what they’ll need to know. I hope you’re keeping track of your thought processes and work, to help inform future supervisors’ decisions!

As Justin’s successor I cannot compliment him enough on his thought-process-tracking and leave-it-to-be-built-upon work.
Your idea, Stephanie, is a good one for almost any application (library or not). In both the incoming and outgoing positions, I have found a Hot Sheet of FAQ and a “Typical Day” rundown is a good place to start. Particularly for the person leaving, the process of writing these two basic documents requires them to think through what information they might be taking for granted but the new person might not know. Coalescing it all to something manageable is it’s own challenge but you are just giving the keys and principals, as you noted it is up to the successor (or student leader) to take that and build on it.

When most people hear the term “study abroad,” they think of a semester or even a year overseas their junior year of college. Outside of spending your whole masters program at an international university, most people don’t think of study abroad in graduate school, let alone study abroad for an MLS or MIS.